by Alex Gordon
In their enclosure, the horses whinnied, pawed the dirt.
“Come inside, Lauren.” Corey stood at her elbow. “Mistress’s orders. Please.”
“Afraid she’ll bind you if you don’t keep me quiet.”
“That’s not fair.” Corey leaned close, soft words in her ear. “She has a job to do. We need to let her do it.”
“That was always the plan, wasn’t it? Get me out of the house, keep me out until they did whatever?” Lauren looked into eyes gone as chilly as the rest. “What are they trying to do?”
“The—the space between is thinning. They’re going to close it, or make it thicker, or something.”
“And trap Blaine on this side with us?”
“Mistress only has your word that you saw him.” Corey made another move to take Lauren’s arm, stopped when she flinched away. “Please—we’ll just go inside and wait it out.”
“It’s not right!” Lauren looked overhead at the roiling sky.
One of the horses screamed. So human a sound, like a cry from Hell.
LEAF CATEMAN MANEUVERED out of bed, probed for his slippers with toes numbed by gauze and another of Amanda’s concoctions. Pain reliever, this one—it soaked through his skin and clouded his mind like drink.
He stood. Held his arms out to the sides for balance, like a baby taking its first steps. Tottered to the door, turned the handle, and pulled. Pulled again.
“Lock me in, will you?” Cateman pressed his hand to the brass escutcheon, willed the mechanism behind it to move. Felt the clicks, even through the gauze. Turned the handle again, opened the door, stepped out into the hall.
Closed his eyes, and for the first time in his life struggled to get a sense of his own house.
For a while, nothing but confusion. Millie and the others, their squabbles and petty jealousies. Amanda, stolid and dull, her power as graceless as her form.
Then he felt it, like a comet trail in the sky, clean and bright and sharp and cold and so unlike anything he had ever known. The feeling drove him to the stairs, sent him pounding down with a burst of young man’s strength. He pushed past a shocked Millie, sent one of the other women into a screaming fit when she saw him.
Swept open the door of the green parlor, and found Jorie, Thad Trace, and the others seated in a circle in the middle of the floor. They held hands, their heads bowed, a golden haze shimmering above them.
“I said, no interruptions.” Jorie looked toward the door. “Oh, fucking hell.”
“You dare?” Cateman staggered into the room as weakness reclaimed him. “In my house?” He gripped the arm of the couch and fell to his knees, his bandaged hands sliding across the smooth upholstery.
“It’s my house, too, Leaf.” Jorie turned back to the others, and closed her eyes. “My house, my land, my money, my name.” The golden haze grew more luminous. “My Gideon.”
Cateman dragged in one long breath, then another, his rattled wheezing filling his ears. It felt stronger in here, this new power. But it felt wrong, as well, a rogue horse under the rein of an inexperienced rider. “What have you done?”
“What you never would. I freed Blaine. Pulled out the plug. Let the dark light in.” Jorie smiled. “Now Virginia is trying to put the plug back, and I am going to stop her.”
“Now’s not the time. You must wait—”
“Wait for what? Reardon doesn’t know anything. He never taught her. Dear Matthew. Your precious Emma’s jailbait boyfriend.” Jorie glanced at him, and tsked. “Oh, the look on your face. What’s left of it. As if you didn’t plan that all along. As if you didn’t dangle her in front of him like a prize. It’s your way, dear. I know I’m not the first snack package you threw at any man you thought could help you.”
Cateman fell silent. His mind had clouded anew, and he struggled to track his thoughts. He looked to the faces of the other men he had raised from boyhood, felt the heart sear of yet another betrayal. “Thad? Emlyn? Jeremiah?”
“A man gets tired of waiting, Leaf.” Thad Trace kept his eyes closed, declined to grace his Master with even the barest of acknowledgments. “My father waited for your father, and then he waited for you until the day he died. ‘It’s our forty years in the desert,’ he told me on his deathbed. But it’s been a hell of a lot longer than forty years, hasn’t it?” He shook his head. “We’ve waited long enough. It’s time.”
“You can’t.” Cateman pushed to his feet, arm muscles cramping from the strain. “Blaine is still bound to Gideon. As the demon is bound here, so will all his be bound here. Entrapped here with him—you can’t—” He crumpled again to his knees as pain gripped him. Heard Jorie swear and call for aid, looked into her face, and saw the brittle beauty of a china doll, painted and hard. So unlike the other one. Yet in the end they both betrayed him.
Emma. Her name in his mind, for the first time since the last time. Her face, her form. His gift to the one he thought would free Blaine, free Gideon, release them all from the bondage of that first dreadful curse. Until the betrayal that broke his heart.
You weren’t supposed to fall in love with him. He saw her now, standing in the middle of the room, hair an ebony tumble, clad in the dress she wore that last horrible night. Vermilion, brilliant as flame. Emma. You were supposed to bring him to me.
Then Cateman felt arms surround him, iron holds around his arms, his legs. He tried to fight, even as his strength failed and the blackness closed in. “All is betrayal.”
“That’s life, darling.” Jorie’s voice, bright and cheap as tinfoil. The last thing he saw.
Then the darkness claimed him.
LAUREN DARTED AROUND Corey and ran back toward the barn. The golden glow had intensified so that she had to squint to look at it, saw Waycross and the others seated within, hands joined, heads bowed.
Eventually, Waycross’s voice emerged, tinny as a radio announcer’s, filtered and warped by the power that enveloped them all. “Thin as water, be now ice. Pale as daylight, be now night.” The glow swirled and shimmered, reflected rainbows, like some opalescent concoction. “Until the final time to come, when this world and the next are one. Disjoin, divide, disjoin, divide—”
“Disjoin, divide.” The others took up the chant, repeated the words over and over, some rocking to and fro, others nodding their heads in time. For a time, their voices grew louder and louder.
Then the gold haze deepened to something that looked solid to the touch, and the voices faded to whispers on the edge of hearing. One minute passed. Another.
Then the haze lightened, and the voices sounded like a chant of rebellion, loud enough to drive nesting birds from the barn rafters and drive the horses to gallop in circles in their corral. Waycross shushed them, and the volume lowered until they fell silent and the gold had faded to nothing.
Then they let go of one another’s hands. Zeke lumbered to his feet and cracked his back, then dug into the pocket of his barn coat. Removed a pouch of tobacco, hooked a chaw with his finger, and crammed it in his mouth. Phil pulled his knees to his chest and rocked back and forth, then stretched his legs in front of him. Waycross buried her face in her hands. One of the women sobbed while her neighbor held her.
Lauren looked overhead. The cloud cover had lifted, the sky lightened to run-of-the-mill darkness. Was she disappointed—no, she wasn’t that selfish and stupid. But she truly had not expected the spell to work. She still felt the restlessness, the tingle in her hands. “That’s it?”
“You’ve no idea.” For the first time, Corey eyed her with annoyance bordering on disgust. “The—strength they needed to put into that spell. If any of them are sick, weak?” He folded his arms, hands clenched into fists. “They all sacrificed life, some of them a year or more. They sacrifice every time they work a protection spell. Mistress Waycross is only in her fifties, and she looks what, seventy?”
Lauren thought back to a few short weeks before, and the emaciated figure in the hospice bed. “Like my dad.”
“Yeah.” Corey pulled the r
oll of antacid tablets from his jacket pocket, tossed a few more into his mouth. “Twenty years or more he gave up, to keep you out of it. For all the good it did him, or you.” He turned and headed back toward the house.
Lauren met Waycross’s eye. The woman gave her nothing but a level stare, the old dog showing the young pup how it was done.
Zeke waved everyone quiet. “I say it’s time to give a cheer for our good mistress.” As Waycross shook her head and everyone else applauded, he motioned like an orchestra conductor. “And a one—and a two—”
A rumble like summer thunder sounded, rattled the barn and everyone inside. Silence descended, an uncertain quiet that said that this was not something they expected.
“Snowstorm headed this way? Thunder snow?” Penny kneaded her hands, flexed her fingers. “I feel something in the air—”
The wind blew in out of nowhere, a chill gale sharp as a slap to the face. It funneled through the open barn door, the windows, blew caps off heads, and kicked dust and hay into the air.
Lauren looked up.
The sky boiled, black cloud tumbling counterclockwise as the wind picked up speed and pushed it along, faster and faster, a hurricane in miniature that blew with a manic howl, first high-pitched, then low, an orchestra gone mad. A few birds erupted in squawking scatter, vanishing into the trees. Then there was no sound but the panicked whinnying of Waycross’s horses, and the wind.
“Get inside the house! Now!” Waycross herded the others out of the barn. “Go right down to the cellar and stay there.”
The protests rang out. “My Bill is home—my Kate—the kids—” A few people obeyed Waycross and headed toward the house, but most ran to their vehicles, scrabbling in pockets and purses for keys.
Then, over the course of a hammering heartbeat, the wind quieted. The sky stilled.
People stopped in their tracks and looked up.
A whine like jet engines, first distant, then growing louder and louder, closer and closer. And with it came snow, from zero to blizzard in a blink, and cold like the blast from a deep freeze. People ran, slid on the snow, on wet ground changed to ice in moments, stumbled, fell. Most made it to their vehicles, started them, and peeled out of the driveway, in reverse or forward, tires spinning, snow and gravel flying.
Then came a crash as two pickups collided, the loser sliding across the driveway onto the grass. The driver tumbled out and scrambled onto the winner’s flatbed, and they vanished into the storm.
Lauren helped one of the fallen, an older woman, mount the steps into the house. Started back down to look for more stragglers, and met Phil halfway.
“Don’t need you freezing on top of everything.” He pushed and prodded her into an ancient barn coat. “Damn stupid getup for all hell breaking loose.”
“I was out to dinner.”
“That’s nice. You look great.” Phil tugged a wool cap down over Lauren’s ears. “Dressed to die—just please don’t.”
“I love the smell of panic in the middle of the Ladysdamn night.” Zeke hobbled to the corral, where Waycross tried to hook a lead to one of the horses’ bridles as it tossed its head and pulled away. “Just open the gate and let ’em go, Mistress.”
“Don’t ask me to do that, Zeke.” Waycross pointed toward the house. “Just get your butt inside.”
“You’re more to us than those critters and I ain’t having you risk your life for them.” Zeke loosed Waycross’s hands from their grip on the bridle. Then he shooed the horses toward the open gate. “Go on—get on with ya!”
“Zeke—no.” Waycross ran to close the gate, but Zeke grabbed her around the waist and held her back.
“They’re Gideon horses, Virginia. They either know their way around or they never will.” He waved to Lauren. “Get her inside.”
Lauren grabbed Waycross’s hand and pulled her toward the house. The woman’s fingers had gone white and frigid, her nose and cheeks bright red. Lauren’s own hands ached, and she could no longer feel her face, her toes.
They stumbled up the steps, the leather soles of their boots like skate blades on the ice. Penny met them at the door with a blanket, wrapped them together, and pulled them inside.
“I don’t understand—I don’t—” Waycross shook out of the blanket and returned to the doorway. “Ezekiel Pyne, get your ass in here now.” She stepped aside as the old man stumbled in, coated in snow.
“That’s my Ginny.” A wave of shivering overtook him, and he let Corey and Phil bundle him into a blanket while Penny checked him for frostbite.
“I need to get the furnace going.” Waycross opened one of the kitchen drawers and pulled out a box of matches. “Been saving it for a cold snap. Don’t think it could get much snappier.” She stood by the back window, looked out every so often.
Lauren walked to the back door, saw only blowing snow, swirling cloud. No horses. No signs of life of any kind. “It looks like it might be letting up a little.”
“We can’t stay here, Mistress.” Zeke took a steaming cup of tea from Penny, and hugged it close. “You’re out in the middle of nowhere, and if anything happened, no one could get out here to help.”
Waycross still stood by the window. “I’m not leaving my home.”
“Don’t make me carry you. And I will do it. I’ve known you longer than anybody here and I’ve got the right.” Zeke stood, dragged off the blanket, and handed it to Penny. “This is the lull. Do you really want to wait for the storm?”
Waycross looked around her kitchen as if to memorize it. As if to say good-bye. “Into Gideon?”
“My house, yes, Mistress. Right on the circle there where you don’t like to go. Across the street from Leaf’s.” Zeke shook out one leg, then the other. Bent his knees. “We need a better truck than mine. I don’t think ol’ Lois would make it through that mess that’s piling up out there now.”
“Nothing we’ve got will make it through there if we don’t get going,” a younger man with a heavy beard piped up. “The way it’s coming down, we’ve got a half hour tops or we ain’t getting out of here.”
“Think you can fit all of us in that tank of yours, Rocky?” Waycross returned to the back door and looked out through the window at the storm.
The young man nodded. “If you all pack light.”
“I think we should go to the Master’s.” Penny shrugged off Waycross’s look of surprise. “Not to insult you, Mistress, but two heads might be better than one in this instance, no matter how much they’ve butted in the past.”
“It’s ground zero. The Cateman house.” Lauren hesitated as all turned to her. She told them about the body she encountered, the threats from Trace and Howell. Her encounter with Leaf Cateman, and his illness. “He talked about making Gideon a ‘shining city.’ He quoted something from his version of the Book of Endor, about the Lady giving the King the power to control demons.”
Penny stared into her cup. “Easy to tell us what he said when he’s not here to say yea or nay.”
Lauren shook her head. She couldn’t summon the energy for anger, not anymore. All she felt was numbness, with no clue as to how to proceed. “I honestly don’t give a damn whether you believe me or not.”
Penny rolled her eyes while the rest of them stared at their hands, the floor. Then Corey spoke up.
“They did threaten her. Thad Trace. Emlyn Howell.” He boosted himself onto the kitchen counter. His tie had vanished at some point, his trousers ripped at the knees. “If she didn’t break the curse, they were going to frame her for the murders of Lolly and the others. But Jorie seemed impatient, like she didn’t want to wait.”
“What could Jorie have done?” Waycross paused as the wind gusted and rattled the windows. “She’s no weakling, but she isn’t strong enough to do this.”
Lauren met the older woman’s eyes again. This time, Waycross looked away. “Blaine is bound to Gideon because of the curse. Everyone thought he was quiet, some poor captive soul awaiting release. He wasn’t. He’s always been here, and he
wants out.”
“He helped Jorie.” Waycross pressed a hand to her mouth, closed her eyes. “He shared his power with her.”
“We need to move.” Zeke dragged on gloves, buckled his flap-eared cap.
CONNIE PETERSBURY WEDGED herself between two rocks and held on as the wind roared. She didn’t feel the bite of the ice and snow—she was past that. But she sensed what drove the storm, what it would soon sweep into Gideon.
Let go. Part of her wanted to do just that, let herself be carried back into the living world with the rest of the half dead, the all-dead. Even though she no longer belonged. Even though she would wind up hurting those she loved, doing to them accidentally what Ashley and Norma and the others wanted to do on purpose.
Ease the pain. She could see it in their faces, even Ashley’s, the slow, steady torture of the fate they had chosen. Like the scrape of fingernails across a blackboard, except that the blackboard was your soul and the fingernails were claws that tore right into it and shredded it like tissue paper. And then they learned that sharing that pain with the living eased their own, if only for a short time. He made sure the relief didn’t last long. He made sure that they would always need to keep hurting.
Blaine. How could something that had once been human have fallen so far?
No. She would stay behind. However lonely the river, it was her home.
LEAF CATEMAN LAY in bed and listened to the wind batter the windows, the clatter of old glass panes shaking in their frames. From downstairs had come sounds of argument, a scream cut off by either a faint or a slap.
If he concentrated, he could hear noises in the distance, car horns and shouts, the wind howling above it all.
Time passed. A footfall, in the hallway. Then came another sound, quieter, closer. The door, opening.
“Aman-da?” Cateman coughed, tasted blood.
“Yes, Master. It’s me.”
“What is happen—?”